Carnage in Abu Dhabi

It certainly wasn't on the pace at Abu Dhabi last weekend.  It caused a lot of confusion and possibly danger when it dribbled along at 40km/h with the field in disarray behind it and cars flying out of the pits at full bore.

There has been a lot of talk in the industry about the speed of the safety car and its procedures. We need more than talk. We need to sort this out.

From what I can gather Frosty came out in front of the pace car and could have put the whole field a lap down if he'd continued.  However, I think he was taken a bit by surprise that the safety car was beside him and going so slow.

Every now and then we have this problem with the safety car getting out of sync with what's going on in pit lane.  With all the pit stops that go on during a safety period, it's often difficult for race control to figure out who's leading the race.

So we ended up with all that soap opera about race order and Steve Johnson not letting Jamie in.  It was just another incident in a surprisingly chaotic race meeting on the Yas Marina Circuit.

I was a bit excited when I got pole for the first race. It was my first pole since 2009.  It all sort of unravelled from there when I stalled it on the starting line.

The track had cooled off from the afternoon and grip had improved.  I used the normal starting procedure, but the soft tyres had so much grip, when I let go of the brake button, it stalled.

I ended up seventh for the race, which was all I could salvage after that start and with a car that wasn't quite balanced right.  Jamie and I swapped places for race 2, but it was still an all-TeamVodafone front row.

I had a much better start to race two even though I lost a spot to Frosty.  But then the fun and games began.  We were one of the big incidents in the race when I went in too deep under brakes into turn 10 and locked the rear tyres.

I turned myself around, lost control and slid into the back of Russell Ingall's car. Unfortunately, his car sustained much heavier damage than mine.

I went over and apologised to Russell after the race. Quite obviously he was not too happy as he was having a great run.  It's a little hard to swallow when a crash is not your fault, but we've both been around this game for a long time and agreed it's one of those things that happen every now and then.

I apologised and now we'll move on.  We weren't the only incident. There was more carnage in that second race than I've seen in four races at Abu Dhabi.

It is amazing that we have a track so wide and smooth with so much run off yet we have so much contact and damage.  In the end, the second race came down to an economy run.

We had the best pace of the field, but Courtney had the better fuel strategy.  You can't discount Courtney in the series, but that win was more about strategy than car and tyres. 

The real standouts from the weekend for me were Alex Davison and Tim Slade.  Keep an eye on these guys this year.

Abu Dhabi was the first event for our new line-up with team principal Roland Dane down the back of the pits and Adrian Burgess up front calling the shots with our race engineers.  The boys have commented that they've now got two voices calling out at them.

I think the new line-up went quite well.  Roland is there to see that the team is running at the level he wants and I didn't see him too displeased at the end of the day; bar the race results, of course.

He can be quite vocal at times, but I think Adrian took it all in his stride.  Adrian was calm and made good, collective decisions with the engineers. I think he knows just what to do to make it all work.

At the end of the weekend, we can come away with a lot of positives.  We had the front row of the grid in both races, had a lot of car speed and had some good strategies.  It was just a shame we couldn't completely capitalise on our strengths.

We've now got a five-week break before the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide, but I'll be back racing again this weekend.  No, it's not another safari or enduro; I'm racing go-karts in Toowoomba to raise money for flood relief.

Like most racers, I started in karts and I always love to get back into them, plus it's for a really good cause.